50 Sketching Resources for User Experience Designers

Sketching is a critical part of the User Experience Design process. Sketching allows us to explore ideas and iterate on concepts quickly and easily before creating detailed mockups. Below is a roundup of many different sketching articles, tools, templates, presentations, videos, books, and examples to help User Experience Designers learn more about sketching and how it benefits UX design.

Articles about Sketching

Shades of Grey: Thoughts on Sketching: Will Evans describes the role sketching plays in his design process and how sketching can help us explore problem spaces whose borders have not been fully defined.

Sketch, Sketch, Sketch: Joshua Brewer explains the value of sketching as it relates to rapid ideation and idea exploration in this 52 Weeks of UX article

Sketching: The Secret Sauce of Design: At the bottom of this Johnny Holland report from the UXLX conference, David Malouf summarizes his workshop that explored what sketching is and how it can be applied in different contexts.

Innovate Successful Products: Sketch!: Phil Barrett writes about the practical benefits of sketching including evolving ideas by having a constructive conversation with yourself, and to get input with less politics, cost, and risk.

Tools for Sketching User Experiences: Jason Robb shares an in-depth look at sketching tools including why ink is better than graphite, what makes a great marker, what makes a quality notebook, and the value of paper templates.

If you have any other sketching resources to share, please share them in the comments!

Because sketches are faster, require less overhead, and by their nature are perceived to be less ‘done,’ they are better suited to the task-artifact cycle of design exploration. They should be considered an effective modeling process for designers to be able to conceive and predict the consequences of certain design arguments during the design ideation phase and subsequently leading to better design. – Will Evans

I am a User Experience Designer with a passion for making people’s lives better through design. I have helped over a dozen organizations obtain a competitive advantage by delivering great user experiences across desktop, mobile, tablet and other channels.

Some of the links under “Sketching Tools” mention which paper/notepads tend to work best in conjunction with certain types of pens. I'd love to read more of your discussion, though it looks like I can't view the thread without being a member of London IA.